The England cricketer Graeme Swann told Nottingham police that he was on a mission to buy screwdrivers to rescue his pet cat from under the floorboards when they stopped his Porsche at 3am and charged him with drink driving.Swann had named the two kittens Max and Paddy, after one of his favourite sit-coms, but when Max went missing England cricket's own funny man soon found himself, in the words of the theme tune, on the road to nowhere.
Swann had been belatedly celebrating his 31st birthday with friends in West Bridgford, just a mile from his home, after returning from England's tour of Bangladesh, when he received a phone call from his wife Sarah to say Max was trapped.
He got in his white Porsche Cayenne and drove towards a supermarket, but was pulled over by PC Steven Denniss, Nottingham magistrates court heard. PC Denniss told the court he initially decided to pull Swann over because he was driving a high-performance car in an area where there had been a spate of burglaries. When he turned around to pursue the cricketer, Swann initially accelerated before eventually stopping.
"Mr Swann stated he had been out that evening and had come back to find his cat trapped under the floorboards in his house," PC Denniss said. "He had gone to Asda to fetch some screwdrivers to remove some floorboards. His speech was slightly slurred but he was compliant. He was slightly upset due to the fact of his cat and what had just happened."
Swann bemoaned the disappearance of his cat on Twitter a few days before the incident. His Twitter followers had earlier been treated to news of Max and Paddy's reluctance to use the cat flap, with Swann suggesting that they suspected it was some sort of decapitating machine
Source www.guardian.co.uk story in paper 16.08.10
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